President Clinton's National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, was veteran of the Sixties "anti-war" movement, which abetted the Communist victories in Vietnam and Cambodia, and created the "Vietnam War syndrome" that made it so difficult afterwards for American presidents to deploy the nation’s military forces. Berger had also been a member of "Peace Now," the leftist movement seeking to pressure the Israeli government to make concessions to Yasser Arafat’s PLO terrorists. Berger and Clinton had first met as activists in the 1972 McGovern presidential campaign, whose primary issue was opposition to the Vietnam War based on the view that the "arrogance of American power" was responsible for the conflict rather than Communist aggression.

Berger was fired from John Kerry's presidential campaign in 2004 when his involvement in a scandal the previous year became public. Said the Examiner story:

"Berger has admitted stealing documents from the National Archives in advance of the 9/11 Commission hearings in 2003. The documents, written by White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, were a 'tough review' of the Clinton administration's shortcomings in dealing with terrorism, Clarke's lawyer told the Washington Post.

"On several occasions, Berger stuffed highly classified documents into his pants and socks before spiriting them out of the Archives building in Washington, according to investigators. On one occasion, upon reaching the street, he hid documents under a construction trailer after checking the windows of the Archives and Justice Department buildings to make sure he was not being watched.

"Berger came back later and retrieved the documents, taking them home and cutting them up with scissors. Two days later, he was informed by Archive employees that his removal of documents had been detected.

"'Berger panicked because he realized he was caught,' said a report by the National Archives inspector general …

"Berger also lied to the public, telling reporters he made an 'honest mistake' by 'inadvertently' taking the documents, which he blamed on his own 'sloppiness.' Bill Clinton vouched for the explanation for Berger, who served as his national security adviser.

"Berger later conceded: 'I was giving a benign explanation for what was not benign.'

"The Justice Department initially said Berger stole only copies of classified documents and not originals. But the House Government Reform Committee later revealed that an unsupervised Berger had been given access to classified files of original, uncopied, uninventoried documents on terrorism. Several Archives officials acknowledged that Berger could have stolen any number of items and they 'would never know what, if any, original documents were missing.'"At his sentencing in September 2005, Berger was fined $50,000, placed on probation for two years and stripped of his security clearance for three years."

In October 2007 the New York Examinerreported that Berger had just been named as an adviser to presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.